When the professor had gone, Sergey Ivanovitch turned to his brother.

“Delighted that you’ve come. For some time, is it? How’s your farming getting on?”

Levin knew that his elder brother took little interest in farming, and only put the question in deference to him, and so he only told him about the sale of his wheat and money matters.

Levin had meant to tell his brother of his determination to get married, and to ask his advice; he had indeed firmly resolved to do so. But after seeing his brother, listening to his conversation with the professor, hearing afterwards the unconsciously patronizing tone in which his brother questioned him about agricultural matters (their mother’s property had not been divided, and Levin took